“Very well. I am ready.”
He knocked at a door, and a gruff voice from within told him to enter. He opened the door and went in, followed by his prisoner.
“I have brought the woman, General. The man is under guard below.” Saying this, and receiving no reply, the officer laid the pass on the table and withdrew, closing the door behind him.
Cromwell stood at the window, looking down on the dark street below, dotted with moving lights. His broad back was toward his visitor, and he did not turn round even when he addressed her. On a chair rested his polished breast-plate and steel cap, otherwise he was accoutred as he had been when she saw him on the road. His voice was hoarse.
“Who are you, wench, and what are you to this man, that you range the land brazenly together under a pass written for neither of you?”
With some difficulty the girl found her voice after two or three ineffectual attempts to speak, and said: “I am Frances Wentworth, sister to Lieutenant Wentworth of General Cromwell’s army.”
The General’s ponderous head turned slowly, and he bent his sullen eyes upon her. She wondered Armstrong had not seen the brutal power of that countenance even by candle-light.
“Why is your brother not in your place?”
“My brother was sorely wounded the morning he set out, and now lies between life and death in our home.”
“How came he wounded?”